BATON ROUGE — The president of the University of Louisiana System said Sunday the current version of next year's state budget "stems the bleeding" for higher education.

The Senate passed its version of the budget Saturday with no cuts to higher education and no cuts to the state's popular college scholarship program TOPS.

"It's about as good as we've been treated in a decade," said University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson. "TOPS is fully funded to keep our commitment to students and higher education was held where it was last year.

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University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson said the latest version of next year's budget, House Bill 1, "is about as good as we've been treated in a decade."
Greg Hilburn/USA Today Network

"Now we're still spending thousands of dollars less per students than some of our competitors, but it looks like we've finally stemmed the bleeding, so it's been a great session for higher education in the state of Louisiana."

The University of Louisiana System is the state's largest system with nine universities and more than 90,000 students.

Henderson was in the Capitol Sunday afternoon to ask lawmakers in the House to keep the funding to TOPS and higher ed intact in the final version.

The House's version of the budget fully funded TOPS but didn't make higher education whole.

Members of the Senate chose to appropriate all of the estimated revenue in its version of the $29 billion budget, while the House held out $206 million because of consistently missed revenue estimates.

The budget bill returns to the House this week where members there can choose to concur with the Senate changes or reject the changes and send the bill to a conference committee for negotiations.

"I don't like that (the Senate) spent 100 percent because it sets us up for midyear cuts," said House GOP Caucus Chairman Lance Harris, R-Alexandria.

Harris did say the Senate's priorities for TOPS and higher education were similar to the House's. He said the delegation will meet to decide whether or not to accept or reject the Senate's amendments.

Acadiana Rep. Blake Miguez, R-Erath, who is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he can't vote to accept the Senate version because it includes raises for Civil Service workers.

"With the dire situation in my area of Acadiana where there have been 15,000 layoffs in the (energy industry), it's a slap in the face to those people to fund pay raises for state workers," Miguez said. "That's not to say that they don't deserve raises, but we're not in an economic position to grant them."

Miguez said he is confident TOPS will remain whole if the budget lands in a conference committee, but is still examining the rest of the amendments in the Senate.

"I'm optimistic we can work something out if the Senate remains open-minded," Miguez said. "Hopefully we can come up with a compromise."

Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1